


neil armstrong wishes he was this cool

by alatarmaia4



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, i wrote this for an assignment and it turned out really well, sci fi, working title was "i promise this isn't star wars fanfic"
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-25
Updated: 2017-02-18
Packaged: 2018-08-24 13:39:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8374225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alatarmaia4/pseuds/alatarmaia4
Summary: Gabriel's just trying to do his thing, okay, and that would be a lot easier if people didn't try to shoot at him, and if his ship wasn't breaking every three seconds, and if his AI would stop subverting her programming to be sassy.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was a class assignment where we were given no restrictions but just told to write "whatever".
> 
> So I wrote this, because I'd recently watched The Force Awakens and my brain was like "STAR WARS" and I was like "brain this is for a grade, I can't turn in fanfiction" and my brain went "PUT GABRIEL FROM SUPERNATURAL IN IT" and i went "brain no"
> 
> so I made it not fanfiction and wrote it and turned it in for a grade (and I got an A but my teacher is a super lenient grader)
> 
> more at the end!

The lightspeed drive was acting up again.

“That is not very conductive to restoring the drive to proper operation,” Nessa, the AI, warned as Gabriel banged on the side of the drive. 

“It worked last time!” He yelled back. He was in the depths of the ship, as much as a ship this small had ‘depth’. One of Nessa’s interface panels - tiny touchscreens with built-in speakers that were scattered throughout the ship - was right above him. The tiny camera mounted at the top of it had swiveled to look down at him.

“Proper tools would be optimal in restoring the drive to its proper function-”

“Yeah, yeah. You said that last time, too.” With a sigh, Gabriel shut the hatch on the drive and clambered back onto the actual floor. Unfortunately, Nessa was really right this time. He needed more than the all-purpose tools he already owned. This was the second time the drive had broken in a month - using it after the first time hadn’t helped except to break it even more. 

“You decided that you would stop in the nearest League port to obtain tools, if my memory database serves,” Nessa said primly as he dragged the floor panel back into place. 

“And I haven’t found one yet, have I?” Gabriel pulled his dirty mechanic gloves off and stuffed them into a pocket. Maintenance wasn’t his favorite thing in the world, but it was necessary to keep the ship running. It would be worse if something like the oxygen converter or the thrusters broke, especially so if he didn’t know how to fix them. Stuff like the lightspeed drive and the artificial gravity matrix, at least, didn’t spell catastrophe. 

Nessa projected a hologram onto the wall, showing their flight path. “We passed Orodruin not two weeks ago,” she reminded him, sounding as accusing as an AI programmed to not stress out a pilot could sound. Which, as Gabriel had discovered, was very. Nessa made very efficient use of her limited tone. 

“Orodruin is a mess of trafficking and muggers. I don’t care if it’s League, I’m not landing there.” Gabriel patted the wall, his shadow making a blank space in the projection. “You wouldn’t want anyone stripping you out of this nice clean ship and making you run some smuggling vessel, would you?”

“Based on local reports and galaxy-wide dramas, smugglers might be more likely to follow through on their promises,” Nessa said. 

“You wound me, Nessa.”

“Also, six days ago we made a complete orbit around Yuecheng V, during which you neglected to dock at any of their numerous ports.”

“They’ve only got open-access ports to certain League pilots, you know that.”

“You have League documentation. This ship has a League badge.”

“Both fake, as you know perfectly well.” Gabriel was luckier than some who ran in the same circles that he did; he’d gotten documentation and had his badge painted on the outside of the ship (in the special kind of pigment they used to keep it from being stripped off in space) before the League had really broken down on pretenders. Not that that stopped anyone from trying to pretend; the League was the closest thing to a central authority that this star system had.

In the beginning it had been known as the Valkyrie League - a loose confederation of planets trying to scrape together what was left of a post-war civilization where most people had just plain stopped caring about anyone but themselves. Plenty of planets had joined, lured by the promise of money and support and stability, but plenty among those that had conveniently forgot that they were supposed to be held to any kind of standard at all; Orodruin wasn’t an exception. 

There wasn’t much the League could do about it. It was old enough to be known as just the League instead of by its name, but not old enough yet to have the kind of authority that would dissuade people from smuggling or doing other various illegal activities that had been going strong since the war and weren’t winding down anytime soon.

The League pretended everything was still alright and everyone did their legal duty, and their pilots were mostly fresh-faced recruits who thought they could make a difference. Not many of them came from planets like Orodruin.

“I know that those documents used to be  _ someone’s _ ,” Nessa said, adopting a tone that Gabriel had learned meant ‘I’m going to talk about this whether you like it or not’. “You-”

Gabriel hit the mute button on Nessa’s interface panel.

“Yada, yada, League bureaucracy, I know it would take awhile for them to realize I was faking it, but who knows how long it’d take to find the tools to fix a lightspeed drive on Yuecheng V.” He got back to his feet and started heading for the cockpit, still talking. “Half the trade that goes in there is restricted and the other half is useless or non-mechanical.”

He had to cut through the tiny ‘living room’ to get to the cockpit. Gabriel automatically twisted to get around the small table without hitting himself on its corner, and ducked under the arch that marked off the cockpit as a separate room. It was slightly too short for the average human to comfortably walk through, but he’d dealt with worse. 

“And yeah,” Gabriel continued, “fine, we went past Andronikos the other day, but I was kind of being  _ pursued  _ by  _ violent people  _ in  _ unmarked ships,  _ which practically screams ‘I’m doing something illegal’ so I don’t know why so many people bother with leaving ‘em unmarked, but whatever, not my business. What is my business is being able to land without getting blown up in the dock. But fine, whatever, where’s the nearest League planet that won’t ask a ton of questions?”

There was silence. Belatedly, Gabriel unmuted Nessa.

“The nearest League planet on our projected path is Cahokia,” Nessa said robotically - using her factory-default voice was the closest she could get to disapproval. She knew Gabriel liked her more human-sounding voice better. “It appears to meet your arbitrary standards and possesses a multitude of mechanic shops around most ports.”

“I don’t need a mechanic-”

“Mechanics must be supplied by someone nearby. Logic dictates that much.” 

“Fine. Cahokia it is.” Gabriel flopped into the pilot’s seat. The dashboard was spread out on three sides; technically four, if he counted the ceiling, which was only half taken up by the windshield. There were two smooth computer panels on either side, bordered by various electric panels with lots of blinking lights, and a multitude of buttons and dials that controlled every little thing a person could possibly need to fly safely. 

The windshield, divided into neat geometric segments by the ship’s frame, still displayed the navigation layout. A few distant planets were highlighted with a partly transparent red circle, their name displayed for his convenience, and the path was shown as a thick red line extending out into the distance on a gradual curve. 

“Gimme the damage readout, I know those other ships hit  _ something, _ ” Gabriel said. The lightspeed drive had worked for exactly three seconds; fast enough to get Gabriel far away enough that whoever it had been couldn’t track him down, but not quite fast enough to take him out of range of their blasters before they hit something. And then it had promptly broken again.

The panel to his left lit up with red schematics. Gabriel turned to look closer, leaning over the armrest. The cockpit had been built so everything was  _ just  _ within reach of a single pilot, which was why he had to squeeze a little to get into the pilot’s chair, but the more important stuff was easier to reach than others. There was a reason he barely ever used his surplus fuel cells, and it was entirely because the button that let him access them was near the ceiling and he had to kneel really awkwardly on his chair to reach it easily.

“Aw, man.” Gabriel looked at the damage with dismay. He might need an actual mechanic this time. The mysterious unmarked ships had managed to knock one of the thrusters slightly askew (he’d have to adjust navigation to make up for that), and another shot appeared to have hit one of the sole outside maintenance panels. “Nessa, tell me that wasn’t anything important.”

“-wasn’t anything important.” Nessa played his own voice back at him. He never should have given her recording capabilities.

“Very funny. Seriously, if they shorted anything out-” 

The lights flickered, as if on cue.

Gabriel swore. “Turn off anything unnecessary. What else is at risk?”

“Lights appear to be a side effect,” Nessa reported, robotic tone vanishing as if it had never existed. This was her calm, don’t-panic-I-was-programmed-to-be-comforting-in-a-crisis voice. “A minor short in the main power cables-”

Gabriel swore again.

“-Thrusters are self-sustaining for the next half hour. The fuse puts at risk everything connected to the main power line.”

“ _ Everything’s  _ connected to the main power line!” 

“Please turn on surplus fuel cells.”

“Is that really my priority?” Gabriel sprang up from his seat and took off back the way he’d come - he’d left his tools in his bedroom, because the lightspeed drive was under his bedroom floor. Shitty move on the part of whoever had designed the ship. “How long’s the oxygen converter gonna last?”

“If the short-out remains minor-” The lights flickered again, and one of Nessa’s access panels distorted and temporarily went blank. “The short-out is now major. Ten minutes.”

“Are you for  _ real? _ ”

“I am not programmed to be able to lie. Much less in a crisis. Artificial gravity is deemed unnecessary. I’m turning it off in one minute.”

“This is  _ not  _ how I thought this day was going to go,” Gabriel muttered, grabbing the toolbox and hurrying back into the living room. 

He yanked his gloves on, and then chose to wait for Nessa to turn off the gravity before he pulled up the floor panel. They were heavier than they looked There was a coil of cord hanging from a hook on the wall, in case the gravity ever went off, and he threaded it through his belt loops and hooked the clip on the end to the toolbox. The pilot jumpsuit he’d put on without thinking that morning was good for something, at least - nobody designed casual clothes with belt loops anymore.

The ship thrummed underneath his feet, and Gabriel was suddenly floating.

“Nine minutes until oxygen fails,” Nessa reminded him.

“I know, I know!” Gabriel pushed himself off the ceiling and grabbed onto the shallow dip in the floor panel that claimed to be a handle. There was a click, and the panel floated towards him, no longer anchored to the rest of the floor. Gabriel grabbed onto the edge of one of the other panels to keep himself in place and pushed away the one he’d removed.

Conveniently, the main power line was right underneath that one. He’d guessed right, this time. Gabriel hooked his foot under the edge of the floor to free up his hands and got to work.

Going outside was not an option. It wasn’t like he had anything that would keep him from immediately dying in the vacuum of space. That would have to wait until he landed. For now, he had seven minutes to figure out how to fix the short from inside and replace anything that had gotten fried.

No pressure or anything.

“Two minutes,” Nessa said, after Gabriel had spent what  _ felt  _ like about three seconds failing to do anything that could have been remotely considered ‘fixing the problem’.

“The final countdown thing is not helpful!”

“I am attempting to isolate the broken panel. Once that is done, the main power line should need only a few replacements.”

“Yeah, how’s that going?” An unexpected surge of electricity made Gabriel swear and yank his hands away, despite the thick mechanic’s gloves. 

“Isolation is in progress.”

“Hold on-” Nothing was ever going to get done if the main line was still connected to the broken part. “Where’s the closest place inside the ship to that panel they hit?”

“The bathroom.”

“The - okay, fine, but if I end up having to stand in the toilet to fix this thing, you’re deleting any trace that it ever happened afterwards.”

“One minute til oxygen converter is offline.”

Gabriel got moving.

He hadn’t been in zero-g in too long. Gabriel made a couple of costly stumbles before he managed to orient himself the right way up and open the bathroom door. The toolbox floated along behind him, anchored to him by the cord. 

He had to use the blowtorch and employ a screwdriver very creatively to pry off a large enough section of the wall to access the power lines. The walls, unlike the floor, were not designed to come apart - all they held was electrical rigging, the frame of the ship, and a hell of a lot of insulation. Gabriel was careful not to dislodge any of the carefully packed-in insulator as he tugged at the cord, trying to figure out which way the broken panel was.

“Twenty seconds,” Nessa said. “It’s to the right.”

Gabriel grabbed the longest tool he owned, some kind of weird wrench he’d never used, and stuck it into the wall, pressing the insulation down so he could get a screwdriver in there. It took a couple of tries, but he saw a bit of warped metal - he thought - that  _ could  _ have been where a blaster’s heat broke the panel and partially melted the power line connector. If he could just dislodge it-

“Ten seconds-”

“ _ Not helpful! _ ” Forget  _ tone,  _ someone needed to program Nessa with better timing. Gabriel jabbed the screwdriver in - was it just the tiniest bit too short? He was positioned so precariously to avoid the toilet that he wasn’t sure if it was just the angle he was reaching from.

Gabriel took a very deep breath a millisecond before Nessa said, 

“Oxygen converter offline.”

Gabriel did not breathe back out. He could feel the air getting a little thinner, very slowly, as the converter went offline. Eventually, it would peter out to nothing, with no spare air tanks and no carbon dioxide getting converted. As long as he didn’t breathe in until the converter was back online, he’d have an atmosphere. Inside the ship, at least.

Gabriel idly reflected that this would be a lot worse if he was human and actually needed to breathe.

He kept holding the breath he’d taken, and went back to poking at the power line. Nessa had enough power inside the ship’s walls that she could have decoupled it, but the connection had been messed up by the blaster hit and probably wasn’t working properly. It would be hell to fix later, but he could probably break it off without  _ too  _ much trouble.

“Turning off the oxygen converter,” Nessa said. Gabriel didn’t reply, because that would involve breathing out. He may not have needed to breathe, but he still needed oxygen in his lungs to be able to trick his body into thinking that things were still functioning normally. He regretted, in an absentminded kind of way, that there was nobody around to show off to - it was always funny, seeing people’s faces when they realized he wasn’t quite as human as he looked. 

Then again, any humans would’ve died by now because of the lack of oxygen, and if he liked a human enough to let them on his ship, he definitely wouldn’t want them dying. 

Turning off the converter was a good idea, though, even if he couldn’t say so. It would prevent anything else from going wrong from whatever the converter might do while valiantly struggling to regain power.

The screwdriver finally caught against the power cable coupling. Gabriel scraped at it ineffectively, and then managed to change the angle enough that the cable fell away from the outlet with a few stray sparks and a faint hiss.

“There are three sections of cabling that have overloaded and need to be replaced,” Nessa said, and rattled off two different kinds of connector which luckily Gabriel had spares of. He reoriented again and spent several minutes pulling up more floor panels, still holding his breath.

When nothing was at risk of blowing up or breaking, he replaced most of the floor, and went over to the converter and finally breathed out, giving it all his built-up carbon dioxide. He sucked in a breath from the remaining air gratefully. Stale oxygen was  _ definitely  _ not preferable, even if it kept him alive. Below, the converter clunked and wheezed its way back to life. 

“You should replace some of those parts,” Nessa said.

“Put it on my to-do list,” Gabriel said, inwardly rejoicing over the fact that he could  _ talk  _ again. He dragged the floor panel back into place and straggled back into the cockpit, belatedly unhooking himself from the toolbox. He’d put the cord back later. “Tell me there’s no more imminent disasters.”

“Navigation will need to be recalibrated to compensate for the thruster. Recalibrating.” Nessa was silent for a minute, then said, “Please perform a self medical evaluation as soon as possible.”

“Oh, come on,” Gabriel complained, slumping down in his chair. Slumping required that he give up some leg space and push his knees a little painfully against the dashboard, but it was a fair price to pay. He was partially dramatic by nature, and partially because Nessa wasn’t good at recognizing subtle emotions.

“You have often expressed reluctance to use the gifts you inherited from your mother and explained why in extravagant detail, albeit when you thought I was inactive. You have just used one such talent. Please perform a self medical evaluation.”

“Just storing breath isn’t that dangerous-”

“And yet while you were on Kaldemos, you neglected to do so and breathed in tainted air instead,” Nessa interrupted. “May I remind you that the air on Kaldemos is only 53% oxygen and 2% nitrogen, and you fainted almost immediately upon returning to the ship.”

“You may  _ not  _ remind me,” Gabriel said, somewhat halfheartedly, since she already had. “Fine. You take care of navigation, I’ll make sure nothing weird’s happening to me. It’s only a minor biological trait.” He muttered the last bit under his breath. Nessa didn’t reply, but Gabriel doubted it was because she hadn’t heard.

A miniature medical scanner - the only kind that would fit in the cockpit - popped out from under the armrest after Gabriel keyed in the command code. It buzzed back and forth over his forearm a couple times, forced Gabriel to sit still so it could get an eye signature, and then froze. A loading bar appeared on the screen to his left.

Gabriel gazed through the thick plastiglass of the windshield while he waited for the results. Outside, stars and planets were dusted against a pitch-black backdrop, some in sparse, lonely groups and others in thick glittery clouds that were tinged red and blue and purple. 

Nobody became a pilot without at least a little bit of love for just the look of space. He’d been in pilot’s bars before, and half of the time people were talking about the constellations at home, telling stories or myths about them. It reminded Gabriel of old pirate stories he’d heard, when ships were only for water and people always talked about being called to the sea.

He could definitely understand that kind of story.

“There appear to be no permanent adverse effects,” Nessa said after a few minutes of silence, obviously cheating and using her presence inside the computer to read his results.

“I thought you were navigating?”

“Autopilot is engaged and we are proceeding along the new path. Please do not do anything strenuous until you have had time to recover.”

“For fuck’s sake, Nessa. I don’t need an autopilot and I’m  _ fine.  _ I only held my breath for like three-”

“Eleven minutes and forty seconds.”

“Whatever. Turn the autopilot off. It’s my ship and I’m flying it.”

Nessa was silent, but Gabriel saw the signal for the autopilot blink off. His hands fell into well-remembered positions on the yoke, and Gabriel kept to the projected path without the slightest waver. The ship’s thrusters were nearly silent - or maybe he was just used to the feel and the sound of flying. He’d basically lived in space for most of his life. It wouldn’t be the most outlandish thing about him.

“Wonder who those unmarked ships were,” Gabriel muttered. They’d caused him enough trouble today that he was considering trying to track them back down, instead of just ignoring what had happened. Whoever had been flying had definitely been aiming specifically for him, which was something to be worried about.

“The dark color of the ships suggest that they are either smugglers or pretending to be,” Nessa said. It was true - smugglers did prefer dark colors spotted with white and blue and orange, to better blend into the sky. “It is unlikely they are a part of your mother’s old group, but there could be a connection.”

“Mom’s buddies, huh.” There was a topic he hadn’t thought about in years. “Nobody knows this ship is mine. Much less who  _ I  _ am, or who my mother is. I got it ages after I - after I turned eighteen.”

Nessa, tastefully, did not say anything along the lines of ‘by the way, wasn’t eighteen when you stopped talking to your family?’ or attempt to broach the topic at all.

“It is possible that they are after you because of your association with the League,” was what she did say, which wasn’t much better.

“I’m not that person any more,” Gabriel snapped, and then breathed in slowly. “I don’t even use that name any more,” he continued, calmer. “How would they know it was me?”

“I say this with complete candor,” Nessa said. “The name on your current fake League badge is a very bad pseudonym. It’s just an anagram.”

“I thought it was funny.”

“It is. I assume it is, at least; I don’t know much about humor. Humans find strange things funny. My point is that it’s very obvious.” 

“Okay, so number three on the to-do list is get better fake documents.”

“You could always use your real ones.”

“Not happening,” Gabriel said immediately. “And you know perfectly well why, so don’t bother asking.” He refocused on flying; he’d drifted a little, distracted by Nessa. “Get me to Cahokia. We’ll figure things out from there once I’ve got a ship that won’t break every time it gets shot at a little.”

“As you wish,” Nessa said dryly.

They soared off deeper into the glitter of space.

 


	2. The Revision (Basically a Completely Different Story)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So funny story, I turned this draft in, and my creative writing teacher called me up to talk about it.
> 
> "This is good," he said. "But it's not a short story. It's the beginning of a novel."
> 
> So I rewrote it to actually be a short story. Hopefully I have fewer Chekov's guns littered around in this one; there were some major revisions, let me tell you.
> 
> If I turn it in and ANOTHER change gets made, I'll either update this chapter or add a new one.

The lightspeed drive was acting up again.

“That is not very conducive to restoring the drive to proper operation,” Nessa warned as Gabriel banged on the side of the drive. 

“It worked last time!” He yelled back. He was in the depths of the ship, as much as a ship this small had ‘depth’. One of Nessa’s interface panels - tiny touchscreens with built-in speakers that were scattered throughout the ship - was right above him. The tiny camera mounted at the top of it had swiveled to look down at him.

“Proper tools would be optimal in restoring the drive to its proper function-”

“Yeah, yeah. You said that last time, too.” With a sigh, Gabriel shut the hatch on the drive and clambered back onto the actual floor. Unfortunately, Nessa was right this time. He needed something other than the all-purpose tools he already owned. This was the second time the drive had broken in a month - using it after the first time hadn’t helped except to break it even more. First it had somehow broken off from the main power couplings, then it had started making noises and sputtering off at the worst times. Nessa thought it was the hyperconductor, but it could have been any number of tiny bits and pieces.

“You decided that you would stop in the nearest League port to obtain tools, if my memory database serves,” Nessa said primly as he dragged the floor panel back into place. 

“And I haven’t found one yet, have I?” Gabriel pulled his dirty mechanic gloves off and stuffed them into a pocket. Maintenance wasn’t his favorite thing in the world, but it was necessary to keep the ship running. It would be worse if something like the oxygen converter or the thrusters broke, especially if he wasn’t able to fix them. Stuff like the lightspeed drive and the artificial gravity matrix, at least, didn’t spell catastrophe. 

Nessa projected a hologram onto the wall, showing their flight path. “We passed Orodruin not two weeks ago,” she reminded him, sounding as accusing as an AI programmed to not stress out a pilot could sound. Which, as Gabriel had discovered, was very. Nessa made very efficient use of her limited tone. 

“Orodruin is a mess of trafficking and muggers. I don’t care if it’s League, I’m not landing there.” Gabriel patted the wall, his shadow making a blank space in the projection. “You wouldn’t want anyone stripping you out of this nice clean ship and making you run some smuggling vessel, would you?”

“Based on local reports and galaxy-wide dramas, smugglers might be more likely to follow through on their promises,” Nessa said. 

“You wound me, Nessa.”

“Also, six days ago we made a complete orbit around Yuecheng V, during which you neglected to dock at any of their numerous ports.”

“They’ve only got open-access ports to certain League pilots, you know that.”

“You have League documentation. This ship has a League badge. You could manage.”

“Both fake, as you know perfectly well.” Gabriel was luckier than some who ran in the same circles that he did; he’d gotten documentation and had his badge painted on the outside of the ship (in the special kind of pigment they used to keep it from being stripped off in space) before the League had really cracked down on any con men only pretending to be members. Not that that stopped anyone from trying to pretend; the League was the closest thing to a central authority that this star system had.

     In the beginning it had been known as the Valkyrie League - a loose confederation of planets trying to scrape together what was left of a post-war civilization where most people had just plain stopped caring about anyone but themselves. Many had joined, but plenty among those who had conveniently forgot that they were held to a standard, or supposed to self-regulate in any way. Orodruin wasn’t an exception. 

    There wasn’t much the League could do about it. It was old enough to be known as just the League instead of by its name, but not old enough yet to have the kind of authority that would dissuade people from smuggling or doing other various illegal activities that had been going strong since the war and weren’t winding down anytime soon.

The League pretended everything was still alright and everyone did their legal duty, and their pilots were mostly fresh-faced recruits who thought they could make a difference. Not many of them came from planets like Orodruin.

“Those documents are fake, but you do have real ones,” Nessa said, adopting a tone that Gabriel had learned meant ‘I’m going to talk about this whether you like it or not’. “You-”

Gabriel hit the mute button on Nessa’s interface panel.

    “Yada, yada, League bureaucracy, I know it would take awhile for them to realize I was faking it, but who knows how long it’d take to find the tools to fix a lightspeed drive on Yuecheng V.” He got back to his feet and started heading for the cockpit, still talking. “Half the trade that goes in there is restricted and the other half is useless or non-mechanical.”

He had to cut through the tiny ‘living room’ to get to the cockpit. Gabriel automatically twisted to get around the small table without hitting himself on its corner, and ducked under the arch that marked off the cockpit as a separate room. It was slightly too short for the average human to comfortably walk through, but he’d dealt with worse. 

    “But fine,” Gabriel said. “We need to dock. Whatever. Where’s the nearest port?”

There was silence. Belatedly, Gabriel unmuted Nessa.

“The nearest League planet on our projected path is Andronikos,” Nessa said robotically - using her factory-default voice was the closest she could get to disapproval. She knew Gabriel liked her more human-sounding voice better. “It appears to meet your arbitrary standards and possesses a multitude of mechanic shops around most ports.”

“I don’t need a mechanic-”

“Mechanics must be supplied by someone nearby. Logic dictates that much.” 

“Fine. Andronikos it is.” Gabriel flopped into the pilot’s seat. The dashboard was spread out on three sides; technically four, if he counted the ceiling, which was only half taken up by the windshield. There were two smooth computer panels on either side, bordered by various electric panels with lots of blinking lights, and a multitude of buttons and dials that controlled every little thing a person could possibly need to fly safely. 

    The windshield, divided into neat geometric segments by the ship’s frame, still displayed the navigation layout. A few distant planets were highlighted with a partly transparent red circle, their name displayed for his convenience, and the path was shown as a thick red line extending out into the distance on a gradual curve. It flickered as Nessa plotted out the new path, and then resolidified, pointing in a different direction.

    “The lightspeed drive-” Nessa began.

    “It’ll work long enough to get us there.” Gabriel cut her off. “Engage.”

    “Engaging lightspeed drive.”

    Gabriel leaned back into his seat just before the drive started up. There was an ominous cough and rattle, and then the ship launched forwards with enough force that if he’d been sitting forwards, he would have been slammed back into the chair hard enough to break his neck.

    Luckily, he wasn’t stupid. Even luckier, Andronikos was only a few minutes away on lightspeed. That shouldn’t put too much stress on the lightspeed drive. In the meantime, he had three minutes to waste.

    Gabriel reached for the snacks he kept stored under the pilot’s chair. He’d been lucky to find a space big enough to cram even one packet of junk food into.The cockpit had been built so everything was  _ just  _ within reach of a single pilot, which was why he had to squeeze a little to get  into the pilot’s chair, but the more important stuff was easier to reach than others. There was a reason he barely ever used his surplus fuel cells, and it was entirely because the button that let him access them was near the ceiling and he had to kneel really awkwardly on his chair to reach it.

“Please input a destination on Andronikos,” Nessa said, still using her robotic voice. She sounded like an old GPS, the ones that you had to buy expansion packs for if you wanted a voice that didn’t make it sound like a computer that was judging your every turn.

“Wherever is closest,” Gabriel said, around a mouthful of truly terrible candy, and swallowed. He debated grabbing another handful anyway, but a beeping on the monitor distracted him.

“Arriving at Andronikos shortly. Heading for Byzantium.”

Gabriel scoffed - straight into the capital city would  _ not  _ have been his first choice. But it was likely to have whatever parts he’d need, and less likely to be overrun by smugglers or con men. Arguing with Nessa would just put them both in worse moods (even though AI weren’t really supposed to have moods).

“Entering regular flight,” Nessa announced, and the lightspeed drive sputtered and the view outside the window stuttered back into blackness occasionally dotted by stars.

Some of the blackness started moving a little oddly. 

“Nessa,” Gabriel said, sitting up straighter, and then one of the oddly-shaped spots fired at him.

Gabriel ducked. It was a habit, even though he was inside the ship and ducking wouldn’t do shit for him if the window broke. He nearly banged his head against the console. The blaster fire missed, but the bolt of red had seared an afterimage onto his vision.

Not oddly-shaped patches of space at all, but ships. It had to be smugglers. Only they would paint their ships to blend into empty space like that. But what the hell were they doing around Andronikos, or firing at him?

“Nessa!” Gabriel barked, standing up. The ship shuddered under him, faintly, as the smugglers landed a hit. The lights flickered ominously. “What did they hit?”

“Damage located on starboard side.” A panel to his left lit up with red schematics. One section of the ship blinked urgently, circled in white. 

“Did anything short out?” The lights had gone, but only temporarily, so maybe that meant-

“Lights appear to be a side effect of a minor short in the main power cables,” Nessa reported, robotic tone vanishing as if it had never existed. This was her calm, don’t-panic-I-was-programmed-to-be-comforting-in-a-crisis voice. Gabriel swore again anyway. “Thrusters are self-sustaining for the next half hour. The fuse puts at risk everything connected to the main power line.”

“ _ Everything’s  _ connected to the main power line!” 

“Please turn on surplus fuel cells.”

“Is that really my priority?” Gabriel demanded. He grabbed the yoke and aimed the ship into a dive. A third shot barely missed him. Damnit, he’d thought he was  _ done  _ with smugglers. Now he was being attacked by them? “How long’s the oxygen converter gonna last?”

“If the short-out remains minor-” The lights flickered again, and Nessa’s cockpit access panel distorted and temporarily went blank. “Thirty minutes.”

“Are you for  _ real? _ ”

“I am not programmed to be able to lie. Much less in a crisis. Artificial gravity is deemed unnecessary. I’m turning it off in one minute.”

“This is  _ not  _ how I thought this day was going to go,” Gabriel muttered, and took one hand off the yoke to buckle his seatbelt.

His ship could move pretty fast, but the smugglers had the advantage of numbers. Gabriel had aimed to circle around Andronikos, away from them, and hopefully come up from behind, but a second ship blocked his path, emerging from almost complete blackness. Its cockpit lights gave it away. Luckily, or else he might have crashed into them.

    Gabriel shot at them, three times in quick succession, before they could try anything with him. He’d never dreamed he could be so thankful that the pilot’s blaster could be shot without taking a hand off the yoke.

“What can you do about the short?” He demanded. The second ship fired back at him. Gabriel had to dive quickly to avoid it. Even so, there was a faint shudder as the blast skimmed the top of his ship. He pulled up - he wasn’t aiming to land on Andronikos - and tried to dart past them before the larger ship could maneuver to follow.

“Manual repair is recommended. Also, the oxygen converter is malfunctioning. I will have to turn it off to prevent irreparable damage. There is only enough oxygen right now for half an hour of air for one person.” Nessa said, then beeped, and then said, “Try not to talk too much. And breathe slowly.”

“I’m a little busy!” ‘Breathe slowly’ was not the kind of advice he needed right now. The first ship was still behind him. Gabriel was reminded that they were also facing the right way to shoot at him when he felt another telltale shudder. Immediately after that, the ship thrummed underneath him, and Gabriel was suddenly floating. Only the belt kept him from drifting off the chair.

“Gravity offline,” Nessa said, a programmed-in reminder. Then: “If we are hit again in the same place, the damage will become too severe for us to continue.”

“Just make sure my blaster’s pointed at them,” Gabriel snapped. As if he needed  _ more  _ things to go wrong. He hoped the smugglers wouldn’t hit anything important. If the thrusters went off or if Nessa got scrambled-

A blaster shot went flying over him. Gabriel thrust the yoke forward and shot forward The second ship was getting larger fast, but he curved around it tightly and went past before they could even swivel the exterior blasters, much less take aim. The first one was trapped behind the second, now, and hopefully would stay that way; the second would have to turn around. 

    Gabriel sped up as much as he dared. If only he could go to lightspeed - but even if the drive would last, he’d have to work up to it.

    “Nessa!” He yelled. “Will the lightspeed drive hold for one more trip?”

    “Absolutely not-”

    “Not to another planet! Just to anywhere! I don’t care if it’s a deserted, dusty moon, just whatever’s closest!”

    “Calculating probability.”

    The planet changed below him, different clouds and the edge of a new continent coming into view. If he could get at least halfway around the planet, he’d be going just about fast enough to jump to lightspeed. But if he went too far, he might circle back around to the smugglers again. Could he risk it? Gabriel risked a glance away from the windshield and at the tiny clock on his dash. How much air did he have left?

    Something caught his eyes. Gabriel looked back outside.

A ship loomed out of the blackness in front of him. 

    Gabriel yanked the yoke back sharply. His ship went up hard enough to knock him back into his seat and the breath out of his lungs. That was bad - he didn’t have oxygen to waste. Where the hell had that ship come from?

“Smugglers,” Nessa warned, like Gabriel couldn’t see the same space-black paint making it blend in with the darkness behind it. He’d only noticed it because of the lights shining through the windows.

What smugglers were stupid enough to announce themselves like that? Gabriel evened out his sharp rise. If he went around them far enough, he’d be fine.

Strangely, they weren’t shooting. Gabriel went up and over, the ship temporarily vanishing (its disguise was doing its job). He angled his ship down eagerly, diving past the rear of the ship and towards freedom.

“Nessa, lightspeed when I say-”

His ship shuddered and slowed. Gabriel pushed harder on the yoke, and it gave a mechanical groan that made him hastily ease back.

“I believe that is a hook ship,” Nessa said, evenly, like somewhere in her circuits she was trying not to copy Gabriel and swear.

    Gabriel, having no such compunctions, went ahead and cursed. A hook ship was typical of smugglers. It was meant to draw their target’s ships inside it so they could hold the pilot at gunpoint without ever leaving the comfort of their ship. It had been modeled after the gravitational pull of planets, but artificially magnified to mimic the pull of a planet a hundred times the ship’s size.

Their target ships were generally on the smaller side. 

    Like Gabriel’s, for example.

    And he was too close to escape the pull of their ‘hook’.

Gabriel wished he had a rearview mirror, as he was drawn inextricably backwards. The lights on the smuggler’s ship flashed white momentarily, reflecting faintly on the windshield.

He had no suit that would let him escape into space, and that was a stupid idea anyway, with no way of getting to the surface of the planet below or onto another ship where he could make his getaway. And he couldn’t leave Nessa behind.

“You jinxed us,” Nessa said blandly, as their ship was drawn farther into the depths of the other. “With that talk about smugglers earlier.”

“Really not helpful, Nessa.” The bay doors closed in front of him with an ominous crash and rumble of metal locking together, and then a faint hiss as it sealed shut. Gabriel missed the following hiss of air being vented into the bay; he was staring at the crest painted on the inside of the bay doors, heart sinking down to his knees. It was horribly familiar. He had hoped to never see it again.

“There is not enough sustainable air left,” Nessa informed him. “I recommend allowing air from outside the ship to enter-”

“ _ No, _ ” Gabriel said harshly. “ _ Do not  _ allow anyone or anything from this ship inside mine. Keep my atmosphere completely isolated.”

“There is only enough oxygen for  _ perhaps  _ ten more minutes-”

“I don’t care,” Gabriel said, which was a lie, but he’d rather go without oxygen than willingly let a single wisp of air or  _ anything  _ from that ship inside his. It was already getting thin - he’d yelled too much before.

“What are you going to do, hold your breath?”

“I  _ can, _ ” Gabriel said defensively.

“You have also often expressed reluctance to use the gifts you inherited from your mother and explained why in extravagant detail, albeit when you thought I was inactive. I don’t see why now is-”

“Just do it!”

“While you were on Kaldemos, you  _ refused _ to use that talent and breathed in tainted air instead,” Nessa said more insistently. “May I remind you that the air on Kaldemos is only 53% oxygen and 2% nitrogen, and you fainted almost immediately upon returning to the ship.”

“Nessa, I am  _ ordering  _ you, nothing from that ship enters this one until I say so,” Gabriel snapped. “ _ Listen  _ to me.”

“...I will make sure everything stays locked,” Nessa said, somehow conveying reluctance with only a small pause. Gabriel gazed grimly out in front of them, at the painted crest, and then hit a button on the dash. The windows blacked out; he wouldn’t be able to see out, but no one could see in, either.

Gabriel sat back in the pilot’s chair and listened. 

He didn’t hear anything else besides the faint, everyday noises of both his ship and the one he was trapped in. No boots marching down to the bay to try and break in, no muffled voices. It was generally harder to hear through the thick insulation of a spaceship, as opposed to one made to stay inside the atmosphere, but there should have been  _ something.  _

Gabriel took a very deep breath a millisecond before Nessa said, 

“Oxygen levels at nearly zero.”

Gabriel did not breathe back out. He’d still have an atmosphere inside the ship without the oxygen converter; it was just that said atmosphere would be entirely made up of carbon dioxide and therefore unbreathable. 

    Gabriel idly reflected that this would be a lot worse if he was human and actually needed to breathe.

“Attempting to fix what damage I can,” Nessa said. Gabriel didn’t reply, because that would involve breathing out. He may not have needed to breathe, but he still needed oxygen in his lungs to be able to trick his body into thinking that things were still functioning normally. He regretted, in an absentminded kind of way, that there was nobody around to show off to - it was always funny, seeing people’s faces when they realized he wasn’t quite as human as he looked. 

    Then again, any humans would’ve died by now because of the lack of oxygen, and if he liked a human enough to let them on his ship, he definitely wouldn’t want them dying. 

    And he had other things to worry about right then.

    Finally, he caught the noise he had been looking for; the mechanical whirr and whoosh of the interior doors to the bay sliding open. Faint footsteps approached, then paused. Gabriel’s hands flexed on the armrests of his seat. He thought about how quickly he could get to his bedroom and grab the blaster hidden under the pillow.

    The ship rocked abruptly, with a sound from outside like a cannon blaster.

    “They are attempting to enter the ship,” Nessa said. Her calm tone was entirely unsuited to the situation. Gabriel was tempted to say  _ No shit?  _ or ask  _ what  _ the smugglers were doing to get inside, but he couldn’t waste air. 

    There was another cannon-sounding noise. The ship rocked again, harder. Gabriel hoped they weren’t using an  _ actual  _ cannon blaster on his ship. He happened to like it, and he’d probably need it to make an escape.

    “Damage may become severe,” Nessa said. “I’m unlocking the door.” Gabriel’s head jerked up. He would have ordered Nessa to stop, AI independence and personal rights be damned, but the lock _clunk_ ed and the door hissed open behind him before he could even think of what to say to get across what a horrible idea that was.

    Air rushed in, along with three sets of footsteps. Gabriel, stubbornly, did not breathe in. He also did not look behind him as all three people approached the cockpit.

“Told you it was him,” said a woman’s voice.

“I didn’t argue, I just said it was stupid how much effort we were going through,” replied a deeper voice, unsettlingly familiar. Gabriel’s heart sank a little further.

“C’mon,” said a third, reaching around the back of the chair to poke Gabriel’s shoulder. “Mother wants a word.”

Gabriel said nothing, and stayed sitting down.

“Not this again,” groaned the first woman.

“Get up, Loki,” said the second crossly. Gabriel gritted his teeth at the name. “Sulking’s not going to do you any good.”

“Is he breathing?” Asked the first.

“I dunno. Helblindi, you check.”

Gabriel was expecting a poke, not for Helblindi to stick his hand into the cockpit and jam the butt of a blaster harshly into Gabriel’s stomach. Gabriel wheezed, jerking in surprise, and sucked a breath back in on instinct to replace the one that had been knocked out of him.

“He is now,” Helblindi said; he was the third voice. His hand retreated, taking the blaster with it, and then he reached back around and undid the buckle on Gabriel’s belt before Gabriel had recovered enough to push him away. A darker hand grabbed his arm from the other side and yanked him out of the seat, making Gabriel stumble into the side of the cockpit. Buttons poked uncomfortably into his side.

“Al _ right, _ ” Gabriel snapped, jerking his arm away. He couldn’t get back into the chair, so he stood in the doorway and glared at the three of them. “What do you want?”

“What do you  _ think? _ ” Helblindi asked, frowning at him. Helblindi was always frowning at him in disapproval. It was a constant in pretty much all of Gabriel’s childhood memories. Not that he attempted to remember his childhood often. “I told you, mother wants a word.”

“Not interested. See you later.”

“We’re not asking,” said the woman the second voice belonged to, and raised her eyebrows at him. “You won’t even deign to say hello to me?”

“ _ Fine, _ ” Gabriel forced out. “Hello, Angrboda, wish we could have reunited under different circumstances.” Angrboda frowned, and Gerd, the first voice, rolled her eyes; Gabriel almost hadn’t recognized Gerd, but she still dyed her hair that peculiar green color. Helblindi, unfortunately, didn’t look at all bothered at Gabriel leaving him out. “I’d like to leave now.”

“Not happening,” Gerd said, and grabbed his arm. “C’mon, Laufey’s waiting.”

Unfortunately, things had not changed much since Gabriel was younger; Gerd was still stronger than him, and he couldn’t wrench his arm out of her grip. She completely ignored his struggles and dragged him out into the bay and towards the interior doors that led into the rest of their ship. 

“Go in and fix whatever we shot,” Helblindi said to the man standing just outside Gabriel’s ship. He nodded, striding in like he owned the thing.

    “Hey! Don’t touch my ship!” Gabriel twisted around, but Angrboda grabbed his chin and twisted his head to face forward.

“That’s unnecessary,” Gabriel grumbled. Angrboda didn’t let go.

“You’re the one who bailed on me,” she reminded him, squeezing tighter. “I’m entirely within my rights to be petty.”

Gabriel averted his gaze to the floor. Angrboda scoffed and yanked her hand away.

“Really? You won’t even look at me?”

Gabriel kept his eyes glued on the floor. He said nothing.

He was unceremoniously dragged up to the cockpit, where Gerd finally let go of him. Gabriel straightened his sleeve, just to make a point, and looked around sourly at all the people lingering at the edges of the room. The cockpit was far bigger than his own, but there were still only two other people, not counting the three who had escorted him up, or the pilot or copilot.

“ _ Well, _ ” said the woman in the pilot’s chair, swiveling around. “What a sight for sore eyes.”

“Laufey,” Gabriel said stiffly.

“You really can’t manage ‘mom’, Loki?” Laufey asked, standing up. Infuriatingly, she was still taller than him. Gabriel clenched his jaw and looked at the ceiling. “Or ‘mother’, if informality isn’t in the cards?”

Gabriel said nothing. Laufey sighed. It sounded exaggerated and false to Gabriel.

“I have been waiting for this talk for a long time,” she said. “If you won’t talk, I will. I don’t know what on Earth possessed you to go running off and leave everyone behind, but I think it was very rude of you.”

“Don’t know if you’ve noticed, but you break the law for a living,” Gabriel gritted out, still pointedly looking at the ceiling.

“And you don’t?” Laufey scoffed, and held out her hand. Helblindi looked at the copilot, who shuffled around for a moment and came up with a thin folder. Gabriel glanced down, then had to resist the urge to stare. Since when was  _ Býleistr _ officially Laufey’s copilot? He didn’t remember his brother being that capable at the controls. 

“You also tried to shoot me down,” Gabriel said, trying to distract Laufey. “Remember? It was like one minute ago. I’ll give you time to think.”

“Don’t talk like that to me,” Laufey retorted. “I remember. How else was I supposed to get you in here?”

Gabriel kept his mouth shut. Laufey opened the folder in her lap, looking over the contents leisurely.

    “It’s Gabriel now, is it?” She asked mildly. “That was the name we found on the license we found for your ship - and yet,” she said, tapping her chin thoughtfully, “that’s not the name on this League pilot license.”

Gabriel did not dignify that with a response.

“Logi...Danabreia,” Laufey read out, putting a careful, disdainful emphasis on the last name. “I suppose you thought using your cousin’s name would be funny. But an anagram of your  _ other  _ fake name, really?”

When Gabriel still didn’t look down, Helblindi sighed, then reached over and grabbed his chin, forcing his gaze downwards. Laufey gazed at him with raised eyebrows and a faintly amused expression, like Gabriel was still a naughty kid who’d accidentally set the autopilot for the middle of the Muspelheim system.

“And while we’re on the subject of names,” Laufey said, sounding amused, “Gabriel  _ Adonai,  _ really? Borrowing names from antiquated religions now, are we?”

“Better than Laufeyjarson,” Gabriel bit out. 

“That’s a little harsh.” Laufey snapped the file shut and set it to the side, leaning forward. “You joined the League  _ twice,  _ both times under false names. You’ve gone to great lengths to scrub your true self out of existence; even going so far as to retreat to  _ Asgard. _ ” Her mouth twisted in distaste. “Were we really that bad? There were some good times, weren’t there? Surely you haven’t forgotten Angrboda. I thought you two were quite happily settled together-”

“Shut the fuck up,” Gabriel snapped, before he could think. Býleistr jolted back in his chair, and Gabriel could see people’s heads move in his periphery like a ripple of surprise extending from him and Laufey. “I stayed as long as I did  _ because  _ of her. I didn’t-”

    “Oh, but you  _ did _ .” Laufey took a step forward. “Dear Angrboda, who you didn’t even have the courtesy to leave so much as a  _ note _ for before you abandoned her.” 

Gabriel was acutely conscious of Angrboda standing just behind him, slightly to the left. 

“You pushed us together because you knew I wanted to leave,” he said, forcing himself to speak evenly. “I was  _ eighteen _ . I stayed because I couldn’t leave without giving up what you forced on me and you know that perfectly well because  _ you organized it. _ ”

Laufey faked surprise, eyes wide. “You don’t have anything to say about love?”

“My love is none of your business,” Gabriel snapped. 

“That’s not a ‘it wasn’t real’, I see,” Laufey said languidly, leaning back. “I thought so. Though by now, I suppose there’s been someone else.”

Gabriel tried very hard not to look over his shoulder at Angrboda, or to react at all. But something in his expression must have betrayed him, because Laufey looked at him with renewed interest.

“Oh, Loki,” she sighed. “Who was it? Some human girl, I suppose. They don’t live nearly as long as us, but that was an advantage, wasn’t it? One less way for us to find you, if she died long before we caught wind of her existence.”

“It’s none of your business,” Gabriel ground out. There had been no  _ human  _ woman,  anyway. Or any  _ human  _ men. 

“I think it is,” Laufey said. “We stay together for a  _ reason,  _ Loki. You cannot go haring off on your own because you got bored-”

    “Boredom and many, many other things-”

    “Don’t  _ interrupt  _ me,” Laufey snapped, showing anger for the first time. “ _ Why,  _ then? If it was so terrible here, why were you the only one to ever leave?”

    Gabriel had a hundred reasons, but the words all faltered before he could say them. He  _ could  _ have said them - but not in a million years to Laufey’s face. Not put words to the feeling of being constantly judged, constantly frowned at, lectured and left on his own when she was too busy with everyone  _ but  _ him. Not the way Laufey’s father used to lurk in the shadows and glare down at him, or how he’d always liked Býleistr best of his two brothers because Býleistr had been the only one to ever slow down and listen to him, which to a younger Gabriel had been a novel and exciting experience.

    Not put to words the way he’d finally realized he was lonely and bored and a little afraid of almost everyone he lived with, and that if he had the chance he didn’t have to live like that.

“Maybe I was the only one smart enough to figure out that I didn’t have to have a shitty live,” Gabriel spat out. “Improving it was a good move on your part, fine, but you left in all the parts I  _ didn’t want. _ ”

Laufey’s expression darkened. 

“If you think that terribly of us, I won’t force you to endure our presence,” she said coldly, and flicked her hand in dismissal. 

Gerd grabbed Gabriel by the arm again and hauled him out. 

They took him back closer to the bay, and then Gerd shoved him up against a wall.

“You watch him,” she told Helblindi and Angrboda; the three of them seemed accustomed to working together. Gabriel wondered when  _ that  _ had happened. “I’m going to go clear out a room where we can leave him.”

She stomped off. Gerd wore such heavy boots it always sounded like she was stomping around in anger. Gabriel had never been a fan of that.

Angrboda leaned up against the wall opposite him. Gabriel shifted awkwardly. Angrboda had always been good at penetrating stares; it helped that her eyes were such a light blue, at contrast with her much darker skin.

“Helblindi,” she said, after what felt like years of awkward silence to Gabriel, “if you don’t mind, I’d like to talk to my  _ husband  _ alone.”

Gabriel tried, and failed, not to flinch at the venom she managed to pack into one word.

“You can’t be serious,” Helblindi said. 

“ _ Go, _ ” Angrboda snapped. “I think I can handle him on my own.”

Helblindi must have been staring at her incredulously, because he took a moment to reply, muttering “It’s your funeral,” before stalking off.

Gabriel dared a brief glance up. Angrboda had her arms crossed. 

“Are you going to look at me, or are you going to have your half of this conversation with the floor?” She asked flatly. 

“The floor doesn’t glare back,” Gabriel muttered. Angrboda scoffed. 

“You’re lucky glaring is all I’m doing. Laufey  _ forced  _ me on you? Is that really what you think?”

“That  _ isn’t  _ what I said,” Gabriel said, lifting his head. “Laufey  _ arranged  _ it to give me a reason to stay. We knew each other for three months before we got married, that doesn’t seem odd to you?”

“People here have gotten married after less time,” Angrboda replied. 

“And it’s worked out  _ so _ well for them.”

“Your brother seems alright.”

“Býleistr got married?” Gabriel stood a little straighter in surprise.

“I meant Helblindi.”

“Who’d marry  _ him? _ ”

“Love is strange,” Angrboda said coolly. “It made me marry you, after all.”

Gabriel looked away again, towards the other end of the hallway.

“I didn’t leave because I didn’t love you,” he said, sticking his hands deep into his pockets. “If I thought you would’ve, I’d have asked you to come with me.”

“Pretty words aren’t going to make me forgive you.”

“I’m not asking for forgiveness.”

“Then what are you asking for?” Angrboda snapped.

“For you to let me go,” Gabriel replied sarcastically. “I don’t  _ know.  _ There’s nothing I can ask for that you’ll give me anymore.”

Angrboda stewed in silence for a few moments. Gabriel thought that the hallway they were in looked very familiar. The bay was right down that way, wasn’t it? Those were almost space-worthy doors; he could almost make out the faint line of airtight sealing along their edges. And there was the mechanic who’d been ordered to fix his ship, walking out and leaving the doors open. 

The beginnings of an idea sparked in his mind.

From the direction that Gerd and Helblindi had left in, there was a clatter like a load of metal falling to the floor, and the faint echo of someone swearing loudly. Angrboda looked sharply towards the noise. Gabriel took off towards the bay doors.

“Hey!” Angrboda was close behind him. Gabriel hoped desperately that she was not still faster than him. Years on the run, however, appeared to have given him that one advantage.

Gabriel spun around as he entered the bay, looking for the control box for the doors. He spotted it immediately and wrenched the lever down, hard enough to snap it off and make the box spark. 

The doors clanked and slid shut. But not fast enough - Angrboda darted through the slowly shrinking gap.

Gabriel was already hightailing it towards his ship. But just as he leaped inside, Angrboda seized his wrist.

“Don’t even  _ think  _ about it,” she bit out.

“Too late,” Gabriel said, panting a little. He tried to pull away. Angrboda’s grip was firm. The doors to the bay slammed shut. “Come with me.”

“ _ What? _ ”

“What do you owe Laufey? Regular meals and a place to stay? Come with me.”

“You’re  _ insane  _ if you think I am getting on that ship with you!” Angrboda pulled on his arm so sharply Gabriel nearly fell off the ship. He managed to grab onto the side of the doorway with his free arm. It felt like she’d dislocated his shoulder. “And you’re not going anywhere, either!”

“I have to,” Gabriel said. “Angie, I can’t stay here-”

“Don’t call me that!” 

“I  _ can’t  _ stay,” Gabriel said desperately. There was a clamor starting outside; someone would force their way in soon enough. 

“Can’t or  _ won’t _ ?” Angrboda snapped. For a heartbeat, Gabriel’s concentration narrowed to her grip on his wrist.

If he stayed, maybe they could fix what had come between them-

But something slammed against the doors of the bay, and the emergency lights turned on, bathing them in a sickly red. Both of them jumped. Angrboda turned for a moment to look at the door. For a single instant, her grip slackened.

Gabriel’s instincts won out. He yanked his arm out of her hand and yelled, “Nessa!”

The last thing he saw before the door of his ship slammed shut was Angrboda’s betrayed expression.

“The main power line has been repaired and the oxygen converter is now functioning,” Nessa rattled off as Gabriel bolted for the cockpit. “Minor repairs are all that remain. They can be left until planetfall is made.”

“Fine, whatever,” Gabriel panted, squeezing into the cockpit and dropping into the seat. He buckled himself in one-handed, hitting the button to clear the windshield again. “We just need to -  _ damnit! _ ” The bay doors were still closed.  _ How  _ had he not thought of that? 

“The bay doors are still closed,” Nessa noted. “Please locate the main control cable.”

“What?”

“Please locate the main control cable for the bay doors,” Nessa repeated. Gabriel heard the mechanical whirr of the ship’s blaster moving around.

“Wait - Angrboda’s still out there-” She wouldn’t need to breathe any more than Gabriel did, but neither of them could survive for long in a vacuum. Gabriel twisted, trying to see where she’d gone.

“This bay has a silo-shield on the bay doors. Please locate the main control cable for the bay doors.”

“They have  _ what? _ ” A silo-shield was expensive - it was a last resort for making sure nothing would get sucked out into space, even if a door was accidentally opened somewhere. It didn’t do anything to stop a ship leaving, or air, but it got rid of the worst of the pull of a vacuum. Gabriel turned around again and looked at the door. 

“The hook controls first,” he said eventually. “The thick red wire-” He didn’t get past ‘red’ before Nessa fired for him, and the wire split in two, frayed ends sparking. “And the doors - it must be - I can’t tell, it must be in that bundle of black ones-” Two more shots. The black bundle fell apart along two nearly-even blaster marks.

The bay doors began to groan open. Not fast enough for Gabriel’s liking, but fast enough that they might make it before someone tried to barge in and stop him.

Gabriel twisted around again, straining to look. Almost entirely out of sight, the doors to the rest of the ship opened a crack. He could only see the top of Angrboda’s head as she squeezed through it to the other side.

He could also see the end of a blaster, pointed towards him.

“Nessa,  _ now, _ ” he said, and the thrusters hummed through the ship’s floor at the same moment that Gabriel shoved the yoke forwards.

His ship shot out of the bay, scraping a little against the very ends of the bay doors. 

“Lightspeed!” Gabriel shouted. The gravity still wasn’t working. He gripped the yoke tight, to anchor himself.

“Not possible-”

“There’s still two other ships, Nessa! We don’t have a lot of options here!”

Nessa was silent for one tense moment. Gabriel could see the shapes of the two ships he’d left behind. They moved against the blackness outside his window. Slowly coming closer and closer…

“Lightspeed in three...two…” Nessa said, and the stars outside dissolved into a rush of light. Andronikos vanished from view. 

It only lasted for half a minute at most. The stars unblurred, shrinking back into pinpricks of light. Gabriel was rattled around by both the lack of gravity and the ominous jostling of the ship, and then everything settled again.

“I believe we should find a different port to put in at,” Nessa said calmly.

After everything that had happened, Gabriel could only sit back and laugh helplessly.

Nessa waited patiently until he’d subsided from ‘laughing hard enough to cry’ to ‘faint giggles’ before adding, “There are several new repairs that need to be made once we make planetfall.”

“Yeah, I figured,” Gabriel snorted.

“Navigation will need to be recalibrated to compensate for the thruster. Recalibrating.” Nessa was silent for a few moments. Gabriel waited, looking out the window in case any more disguised ships came out of the blackness.

“Where to next?” Nessa asked, when she was done figuring out whatever needed to be done to compensate for an off-kilter thruster.

“Anywhere.” Gabriel curled his hand around the yoke. “As long as it gets me far away from here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comment, please! And yes, all names in this chapter are mythologically accurate.

**Author's Note:**

> So, some explanation, and credit where credit is due:
> 
> This is fanfiction written to not be fanfiction, essentially (I wanted to give Gabriel a droid, but that would be pushing it, especially since all I could picture was BB-8), but I did pull stuff from various sources. "Nessa" is named after Nessarose from _Wicked_ , and Gabriel is an unassuming enough name that I got away with using the original. 
> 
> "Orodruin" is the Elvish name for Mount Doom, from the Lord of the Rings. "Andronikos" is the name of a Byzantine emperor from the 1300s, and "Cahokia" is a real place; it's an indigenous city on the Mississippi that was founded around the 9th century AD and was abandoned at some point, I think pre-Columbus. I'm also pretty sure it was a trade city.
> 
> "Kaldemos" is a remix of kalle demos, an antagonist from the Legend of Zelda games, but mostly based off a friend's old tumblr url.
> 
> Gabriel's name, pseudonym, whatever, is based off a somewhat complex train of thought. If you know Gabriel from Supernatural, you know he was disguised as Loki (the god) and took up the name for a while.
> 
> Going by this, I've decided his real name is Loki Laufeyjarson, making the mysterious mother Laufey. The name he gave to the League is Gabriel Elohim, and the anagram on the fake League stuff is "Logi Abelehrim". He thinks it's funny because Logi is similar to Loki, and also another god/spirit in Norse mythology who's often mixed up with Loki.
> 
> No one's ever told him it isn't funny because he really only talks to Nessa, who doesn't understand humor unless it's well-documented.


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